This $3B builder moves from California to Arizona—signaling something about the housing market’s next decade

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KB Home announced on Thursday that it will relocate its corporate headquarters from Los Angeles to Tempe, Arizona, beginning in spring 2027. The builder, which has a $3 billion market capitalization, said the new headquarters in the Phoenix metro area will bring executive leadership and key corporate functions into a more centralized, lower-cost operating environment.

While the giant homebuilder—ranked No. 526 on the Fortune 1000—emphasized that it will maintain a significant presence in California (in particular in San Bernardino County, CA)—a state where it currently operates six divisions and more than 100 active communities—the move reflects a broader shift in where large homebuilders are increasingly doing business.

On one hand, the cost-saving move reflects how homebuilders are tightening operations after several years of margin compression during this softer post-boom period. On the other hand, it underscores how the geographic center of U.S. homebuilding has shifted over the past decade—and where it may continue to shift in the years ahead.

KB Home’s own construction footprint illustrates the trend. Back in 2012, KB Home built nearly four times as many homes in Los Angeles County as it did in Maricopa County, Arizona. Today, that dynamic has flipped dramatically: KB Home’s annual home closings in Maricopa County are now nearly eight times higher than its closings in Los Angeles County, according to data pulled from the ResiClub Terminal. 

“This move brings our teams together in a more collaborative environment, and Phoenix is the right place to do it . . . It positions KB Home to operate more effectively and supports the next phase of our growth,” wrote Robert McGibney, CEO of KB Home, in a press release published on Thursday.

KB Home’s steady shift in production from a market like L.A. to Phoenix also reflects the broader migration of homebuilding activity toward high population growth areas in Arizona, Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Utah, and Tennessee. Metro areas like Phoenix have seen stronger population growth, more available land, and fewer regulatory constraints compared to coastal California markets where land costs, permitting timelines, and development regulations are often far more restrictive. For national homebuilders, those structural differences increasingly influence where capital gets deployed.

To see where America’s core homebuilding markets are concentrated, look at the ResiClub map below.

When you look at the map above, you might notice the similarity it has with the map we share frequently showing how active inventory across the nation compares to pre-pandemic 2019 levels.

In ResiClub’s view, during this post-Pandemic Housing Boom period—where there’s some downward pressure on home prices—markets with an abundance of new home supply have experienced additional softening pressures. When they have the margins to do so, builders are often willing to offer larger affordability incentives (sometimes even lowering net effective prices) to maintain sales in a shifted market.

That’s exactly what we’ve seen in many pockets of the country during this period, and when it happens, it puts additional cooling pressure on the resale market. Some buyers who would have previously considered existing homes are now opting for new homes with more favorable deals, adding further upward pressure on resale inventory.

That alone doesn’t fully explain the current housing market bifurcation, but it’s a piece of the puzzle. According to ResiClub statistical analysis in July 2025, there’s a modest or moderate correlation (R² = 0.31) between recent single-family permitting levels and active inventory climbing above pre-pandemic 2019 levels.

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